We Saw a Chicken …

Category: Wind Things

  • stewart speaks!

    When: Thursday 10th March 2005, 6–7pm

    Where: Bahen Centre BA 2179 (40 St George St., Toronto)

    What: As part of the ESC/EWB Power Shift lecture series, I’m giving the following talk:

    Stewart Russell currently works for Zephyr North, a wind energy consulting company. As an executive of Windshare, he contributed his years of experience in the Scottish wind industry to establishing the TREC wind turbine now installed at the CNE. His presentation will contrast the case of large, industrial wind farms with the technological solutions that are appropriate for developing countries. He will outline the special issues that arise when siting and designing modern wind farms in Ontario, and discuss the special challenges of creating simple, small wind turbines out of locally available materials.

  • Happy Kyoto Day!

    It’s a very small and inadequate thing, but that journey can’t be started without the first step.

  • RIP Talk Energy

    I haven’t heard a peep out of Talk Energy since 25 January, so I’m afraid to say it must have disappeared. The site no longer resolves for me. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. I wish Darrin well with his next (current?) project.

    Oops, spoke too soon. Talk Energy has started resolving again. It’s just that their RSS feed was broken.

  • YEP, Toronto

    Young Environmental Professionals’ Toronto chapter has re-opened. They’re having their first meeting on Wednesday February 9 2005, 6:30 – 9:00 pm at the Bow and Arrow Pub (yay! best beer ever!).

    The speaker will be Joe Mihevc, talking about Transportation in the GTA and its environmental impact. Here’s the YEP Toronto Re-launch Event Flyer, which has the RSVP details.

  • I can tell you now!

    Remember how I said that I can’t tell anyone?

    Well, today Provincial Energy Minister Dwight Duncan announced the successful projects in the Ontario’s renewable energy RFP. To quote the Bloomberg story:

    Wind farms will generate most of the power from these announced projects, adding 355 megawatts electricity to the province. Superior Wind Energy Inc., Erie Shores Wind Farm LP, Canadian Hydro Developers Inc., and Epcor Utilities Inc. are behind the wind projects.

    [link/emphasis mine]

    As co-designer of the Erie Shores Wind Farm turbine layout, it’s great to see some more wind turbines being built.

  • the tubes group

    tower sections
    These are nested sections from two 60m NRG Systems TallTower masts. Paul and I unloaded two of these. They were heavy.

  • NRG Symphonie SQL

    I’ve been using the Symphonie Data Retriever utility for the NRG Symphonie wind dataloggers. I just discovered that the *.NSD site files in C:\NRG\SiteFiles are MS Access databases. This could mean that users could write their own custom data analysis tools outside NRG’s software.

    And I though they were just big ol’ binary files, too.

  • Some edition required

    Wikipedia’s article on the Nuclear thermal rocket currently contains:

    This problem was largely solved by the end of the program, and related work at Argonne National Laboratory looked like it could produce a lot of poo.

    Can’t argue with that …

  • 40 + 40 = 43 ?

    Simple wind calculators: http://wind.scruss.com/windcalcs.html

    Currently:

    • decibel addition
    • wind variation with height
    • simple hemispherical noise propagation.

    It’s something to do to hone my mad JavaScript skillz whilst on the train.

  • ex-bat

    There was a dead bat on Front St. It looked like it had flown straight into the Dominion Public Building; a very solid stone building. And to think that one dead bat can cause all sort of kerfuffle on a wind farm …

  • big, real big

    RePower 5M
    RePower have installed the world’s largest wind turbine, the 5MW RePower 5M. With blades 126m in diameter on a 100-120m tower, this isn’t for the home scale wind enthusiast.

    Their site’s incredibly slow just now, as it has just been discovered by SlashDot …

  • PTC is go

    Last night, the US Congress voted to extend the Wind Energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) to the end of 2005. This should allow approximately US $2B of projects to go ahead.

    This should help stabilize the whole wind industry in North America. It means that manufacturers don’t have to deal with such a boom and bust market. Pity it was all buried in such a shamelessly vote-winning tax cut package, though.

  • more vawts, yawn

    boingboing picked up on Worldchanging‘s story about Former Soviet Weapon Designers Take On Wind Power, claiming ‘this one is supposed to be quieter and less hazardous to birds’. I just had to comment:

    Sigh, yet another vertical axis wind turbine claiming world-changing characteristics. Wind Sail are to be congratulated for keeping their efficiency numbers in the realms of the possible. Many companies have sprung up claiming efficiencies (Cp) of greater that 16/27, the Betz Limit, or theoretical efficiency limit of a wind turbine.

    Reducing the tip speed ratio reduces the efficiency of the device, so the Wind Sail’s Cp of 28% at 12m/s is quite a bit lower than a typical horizontal axis machine (like the Lagerwey LW900, which has a Cp of 34% at 12m/s).

    This machine is miles ahead of the modified Savonius (drag) turbines that some manufacturers are touting. But still, very few knowledgeable wind engineers would advocate roof-mounting a wind turbine. There are issues with turbulence and vibration, not to mention that built-up areas tend to be quite sheltered.

    I also take issue with their claims about fewer bird kills. Any structure kills birds. Buildings and windows kill over 5000x more birds than wind turbines, and cats more than 1000x (source: Bird and bat kills and other effects, AWEA ). It would be a very dizzy raptor that could sit on top of a running vertical axis wind turbine.

    Vertical axis machinery is not some magical energy source suppressed by The Great Conspiracy. They were the subject of huge development projects in the 1970s and 1980s. There were problems with fatigue, higher costs, and lower operating efficiencies than horizontal axis machines. I design wind farms for a living, and I don’t know of a single utility-scale vertical axis machine that is operating, let alone available for commercial purchase.

    The aerospace industries have had limited success in developing viable wind turbines. NASA, Boeing and MAN all tried developing machines, but could never bring a machine to market. It’s interesting to note that most of the successful companies now manufacturing wind turbines started out in agricultural engineering, not aerospace.

  • whew!

    Well, as of noon, the Ontario Renewable Energy RFP deadline has passed. That means I can take a short break from wind farm design.

  • Would you like baby’s-breath with that?

    Drive-Thru Florist, Burlington
    Somewhat alarmingly, Burlington has the first drive-thru florist in Canada.

  • Talkin’ Energy with Darrin and Paul

    darrin_and_paul.jpg
    Darrin Mitchell & Paul Gipe

    I had the pleasure of finally meeting Darrin Mitchell, of TalkEnergy.com, at OSEA‘s office in downtown Toronto. He was in talking to Paul Gipe, who gave Darrin a signed copy of his latest book, Wind Power: Renewable Energy for Home, Farm, & Business

  • They put up a gas station at our wind turbine!

    Pump facia at hydrogen gas station, Ex Place
    Okay, so maybe it’s a hydrogen gas station for a demonstrator fuel cell car, but it’s still a big ugly gas station. I think it spoils the lines of the park in which the WindShare turbine is cited.

    More pictures here: http://scruss.com/gallery/wind

  • not particularly my bag

    Since I now have a big DSLR, as opposed to a subtle wee rangefinder, I need a new camera bag. I like the one I have, so I went to the manufacturer’s website.

    I knew that Crumpler was an odd company, but I wasn’t expecting demented music, a “Nerds” button which sprays poop over the screen, or animated chickens. The question is, would I trust my camera to these people? Could I trust it to anybody else?

  • UofT Solar Car

    UofT Solar Car
    I was very sad to hear that the UofT solar car crashed, killing the driver. I didn’t know Andrew Frow, but I knew some of the Blue Sky Solar Racing team from the sustainability/renewable energy project around UofT.

  • it does too have a name, Bruce


    It’s a Halladay rosette, or umbrella mill (via boingboing, and description thanks to Paul Gipe).